HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot • Hacker News Board

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#21

Post by dictum » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:50 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #4

Some of this is because the HN demographic is young enough that many readers have never seen anything like this before, and thus think it's the Worst Thing Ever. I base this on the numerous counterfactual statements showing a lack of historical awareness in discussions on contentious topics. Of course, I think this is partly the result of not teaching civics in schools.

That's true. On the other hand, maturity often comes with apathy to real societal problems and abuse from bad actors, masked as greater insight: a sense of "that's just the way things are".

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#22

Post by jfb » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:51 PM UTC

cpayne wrote: post #8

anigbrowl wrote: post #4

Some of this is because the HN demographic is young enough that many readers have never seen anything like this before, and thus think it's the Worst Thing Ever. I base this on the numerous counterfactual statements showing a lack of historical awareness in discussions on contentious topics. Of course, I think this is partly the result of not teaching civics in schools.

It would be interesting to know who remembers the days when Slashdot was good

I have fond memories of it, and a user id in the ~10000 range. But I haven't been back in ages, and I can't say I've missed it.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#23

Post by maxhowell » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:52 PM UTC

Agreed. But good things become popular, and popularity changes good things. Not always for the worse. But this time, yes for the worse.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#24

Post by mtowle » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:53 PM UTC

redschell wrote: post #14

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #3

I do not think anyone will disagree with you, but what do we do about it? If you look through PG's comment history, you will see that it is indeed on his radar [1, 2], and as recently as a last couple months. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5935190 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5926081

How about a designated "policy" section, up there with "ask" and "jobs"? It might be nice place to discuss the legal ecosystem for startups, too.

A noble thought, but given the way TechCrunch, et al. scour the site for something, anything to blow out of proportion, a policy section could be asking for trouble. Nothing worse than bloggers conflating your personal politics with would-be thought-leaders whose endowment of idle time is surely coincidental.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#25

Post by mjn » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:54 PM UTC

t0 wrote: post #5

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #3

I do not think anyone will disagree with you, but what do we do about it? If you look through PG's comment history, you will see that it is indeed on his radar [1, 2], and as recently as a last couple months. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5935190 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5926081

I think someone was working on an extension that filtered out stories with certain keywords.

To tackle it on the user rather than keyword level, I'd personally use a highlight/killfile extension for users, if one were available and didn't break things. Add some kind of highlight around the comments of users who are listed in the highlight file, and just remove the comments (and associated sub-thread) posted by users in the killfile.

At the moment I think I would highlight 10 users and killfile 2, and I think both moves would improve my HN experience.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#26

Post by Darmani » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:57 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #20

As far as I can tell, this is the third major shift in the tone of the site. When it first started out there was a lot more technology discussion, but quickly the whole VC/fundraising aspect became very prominent. Recently, legal issues have become very prominent. I think this reflects a real-world trend in what's relevant to "hackers" right now. The financial aspect of the whole technology industry really seemed to…

You have it backwards. For the first few months of existence, Hacker News was called "Startup News."

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#27

Post by guizzy » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:57 PM UTC

It is official; Alexa now confirms: Hacker News is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Hacker News community when Google confirmed that Hacker News market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web traffic. Coming close on the heels of a recent Alexa survey which plainly states that Hacker News has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Hacker News is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent web community IQ test.

You don't need to be Paul Graham to predict Hacker News's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Hacker News faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Hacker News because Hacker News is dying. Things are looking very bad for Hacker News. As many of us are already aware, Hacker News continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#28

Post by eliben » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:57 PM UTC

Unfortunately, I think you're right. I've originally moved from Reddit to HN because of higher quality, but now r/programming and language/technology-specific Subreddits have a much higher content/noise ration than HN. I guess this is mostly because all the folks who think more stories about Snowden are actually more interesting than programming have moved here.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#29

Post by nerfhammer » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:57 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #20

As far as I can tell, this is the third major shift in the tone of the site. When it first started out there was a lot more technology discussion, but quickly the whole VC/fundraising aspect became very prominent. Recently, legal issues have become very prominent. I think this reflects a real-world trend in what's relevant to "hackers" right now. The financial aspect of the whole technology industry really seemed to…

The problem for me is that the political stuff has perfect substitutes that I can easily go to, but I don't know of any alternatives for the skeptical, intelligent tech+business discussion.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#30

Post by paulhodge » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 11:58 PM UTC

cpayne wrote: post #8

anigbrowl wrote: post #4

Some of this is because the HN demographic is young enough that many readers have never seen anything like this before, and thus think it's the Worst Thing Ever. I base this on the numerous counterfactual statements showing a lack of historical awareness in discussions on contentious topics. Of course, I think this is partly the result of not teaching civics in schools.

It would be interesting to know who remembers the days when Slashdot was good

I remember when it was good, but I don't really remember a time that there wasn't a fanatical vibe to it. The content there has always been strongly pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft. There was a time where people actually used the phrase, "Year of the Linux Desktop" without being sarcastic. Oh and writing "Micro$oft" was popular too. And there was always stuff about open source and GNU and GPL and etc.

The thing that made it good was the camaraderie, the general helpfulness, and the quality of posters. You used to be able to find some really intelligent content in the Slashdot comments, since some the smartest people related to that particular topic were probably Slashdot users themselves.